In Joe Carnahan‘s The Grey, a group of oil workers survive a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness and trek through the elements, dying one-by-one as they’re torn to pieces by wolves or simply lose the will to live. It’s a fine metaphor for Sony’s long-gestating adaptation of the Uncharted video game series, which has been in development since 2009 and has burned through more writers, directors, and release dates than I care to include in this sentence. So it’s only natural that Carnahan, whose movies often broken people battling impossible odds, would take over screenwriting duties. He knows a thing or two about winning a war of attrition.

But let’s press pause on that metaphor get to the real news here: Carnahan has apparently finished the Uncharted screenplay and he took to social media to celebrate.

Carnahan shared a picture of the script’s cover page on Instagram, noting with his trademark self-confidence:

Done and Dusted. Now the REAL work begins. If there’s a more monstrously cool action script in Hollywood right now, I wanna read it, ‘cuz this thing is a BEAST.

And while he’s not kidding about the “real work” beginning now (this thing will undoubtedly get written and rewritten a half dozen times if this is the version that actually goes before cameras), it’s a glimmer of hope in the wilderness. The Uncharted movie may actually, you know, exist! Someday!

Of course, Carnahan won’t be directing this one as he’s currently occupied with Bad Boys For Life – that job falls to Night at the Museum and Real Steel director Shawn Levy. Then again, I won’t really believe that the Uncharted movie actually exists until I’m sitting in a movie theater and the closing credits are rolling. Everything else before that could be a carefully orchestrated illusion.

Uncharted, based on the acclaimed video game series of the same name, follows a professional thief named Nathan Drake as he travels the world, plundering treasure and searching for artifacts. He’s like a morally hazy Indiana Jones and it’s the kind of role that demands a movie star (or could make one). Now that Assassin’s Creed has come and gone, I guess this is the project that we can hope will break the dreaded video game movie curse.